KF6GQ Don's
February 23 2019 All Day T-Hunt Thoughts


Well, as the hunters gathered at the Pathfinder start point, we all (4 teams) waited patiently for an early signal to start hunting. 10:00am, silence, 10:10 am still nothing! 10:30am, all is quite on the western hunt. 10:45am after several tries to get contact with WB6HPW via cell phone and many attempts by N6MI via 146.565, still no contact or signal. So by 11:00am all teams decided to go to Summit Inn start point, feeling that Paul's signal might be able to be heard from there. So off we go East on Hwy 60. Sometime after 11:00am, Scott N6MI shared with us that we should head for Redlands, and that a signal might be heard from there. We where crossing the 15 Fwy, when we heard the announcement. So with Pre amp on and SSB selected, we continued on our way east. We chose not to go up to the 10 Fwy, and stayed on the 60 at the 215. We got our first hint of a signal in Moreno Valley area. No way could we get any kind of bearing, except it seemed to be east to south of us! We got off and stopped at the next off ramp at Headcock St. We waited for about 5 minutes and never got any indication of a signal anywhere! We got back on the fwy, and learned that N6AIN was just behind us when he announced over 565, that maybe we should turn our emergency blinkers off! We maybe heard one or two or three burps of something on 565 before going into the canyons before  coming into Beaumont. As we came out of the canyon, we only got bits and pieces of RF noise that with a lot of guessing, if that was a signal! N6AIN had passed us and we got off at Whitewater Wash Exit, to got up on the wind farm hill to get a bearing. Now we got our first bearing, it was still south and east, and discovered that this signal was bizarre. We decided that it was a MCW and tones going into a SSB transmitter. Every tone/code gave a vastly different signal strength, So we went down the 10 fwy till we got to Indio, then went south. Here the signal was peaking at full scale on one of the later tones (we used this for determining bearing and relative signal level).  After bouncing around the base of the mountains for the next hour, I decided to go up 74, Steve wanted to stay down in the flats. About this time we got calls from both MI team and Doug RJN, that they where still bouncing around in Moreno Valley. We told them if they went to La Quinta, they should be able to copy a signal. Now I must say, my Naviguesser Steve was against going up the 74 in this direction, he thought that the signal was not coming from up above! But since I was driving he had to go along. I had expected the signal to get really strong as we approached Pinyon Pines, it did but not as much as I had hoped for. Pointing at Rosa Mt. We got about the same signal strength as we did down below. We bounced around the Pinyon Pines  area for the next 30 minutes or so, not finding anything useful for locating the T(s). Many years ago, a T was hidden up Pigeon Springs Road, on the north side of Rosa Mt. I don't think anyone ever found it directly, because the road became nearly impassable by any less than a committed high clearance four wheel drive vehicle. I remember I had driven up about .5 miles to the second set of water tanks and Deryl in his Escape was behind us, we got to a spot that was so far off camber that both of us decided to turn back before things got any worse.


So against all sense, we drove up to a spot that we were able to turned around on, and decided not to hike up to the T, mostly because the signal again was almost unreadable at this location. I believe this T was also hidden up the same road, just on the other side of the ridge line. This ridge prevents the signal from being seen by the T-hunt vehicle as it approaches the T location. It is my educated guess that the T was here, even though my Naviguesser's conclusion and signal strength of not being a you are there signal, it was located at this point. Steve KD6LAJ feels that it was not here and was somewhere else. I think even though, he is going to be 16 million to 1 be right, I put my money on this location (somewhere else covers a lot of territory).  We left the area about 4:00pm so I wouldn't have to drive in dark (did so anyway). It definitely was a frustrating hunt, but it was also nice to get us into the snow and see some spectacular views.
I guess I should thank Paul for putting on a hide that had us snookered.

Don KF6GQ